Posts tagged methylation

The tiny addition of a chemical mark atop a gene that is well known for its involvement in clinical depression and posttraumatic stress disorder can affect the way a person’s brain responds to threats, according to a new study by Duke University researchers.

The results, which appear online August 3 in Nature Neuroscience, go beyond genetics to help explain why some individuals may be more vulnerable than others to stress and stress-related psychiatric disorders.

The study focused on the serotonin transporter, a molecule that regulates the amount of serotonin signaling between brain cells and is a major target for treatment of depression and mood disorders. In the 1990s, scientists discovered that differences in the DNA sequence of the serotonin transporter gene seemed to give some individuals exaggerated responses to stress, including the development of depression.

(Image caption: An artist’s conception shows how molecules called methyl groups attach to a specific stretch of DNA, changing expression of the serotonin transporter gene in a way that ultimately shapes individual differences in the brain’s reactivity to threat. The methyl groups in this diagram are overlaid on the amygdala of the brain, where threat perception occurs. Credit: Annchen Knodt, Duke University)

Sitting on top of the serotonin transporter’s DNA (and studding the entire genome), are chemical marks called methyl groups that help regulate where and when a gene is active, or expressed. DNA methylation is one form of epigenetic modification being studied by scientists trying to understand how the same genetic code can produce so many different cells and tissues as well as differences between individuals as closely related as twins.

In looking for methylation differences, “we decided to start with the serotonin transporter because we know a lot about it biologically, pharmacologically, behaviorally, and it’s one of the best characterized genes in neuroscience,” said senior author Ahmad Hariri, a professor of psychology and neuroscience and member of the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences.

"If we’re going to make claims about the importance of epigenetics in the human brain, we wanted to start with a gene that we have a fairly good understanding of," Hariri said.

This work is part of the ongoing Duke Neurogenetics Study (DNS), a comprehensive study linking genes, brain activity and other biological markers to risk for mental illness in young adults.

The group performed non-invasive brain imaging in the first 80 college-aged participants of the DNS, showing them pictures of angry or fearful faces and watching the responses of a deep brain region called the amygdala, which helps shape our behavioral and biological responses to threat and stress.

The team also measured the amount of methylation on serotonin transporter DNA isolated from the participants’ saliva, in collaboration with Karestan Koenen at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health in New York.

The greater the methylation of an individual’s serotonin transporter gene, the greater the reactivity of the amygdala, the study found. Increased amygdala reactivity may in turn contribute to an exaggerated stress response and vulnerability to stress-related disorders.

To the group’s surprise, even small methylation variations between individuals were sufficient to create differences between individuals’ amygdala reactivity, said lead author Yuliya Nikolova, a graduate student in Hariri’s group. The amount of methylation was a better predictor of amygdala activity than DNA sequence variation, which had previously been associated with risk for depression and anxiety.

The team was excited about the discovery but also cautious, Hariri said, because there have been many findings in genetics that were never replicated.

That’s why they jumped at the chance to look for the same pattern in a different set of participants, this time in the Teen Alcohol Outcomes Study (TAOS) at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.

Working with TAOS director, Douglas Williamson, the group again measured amygdala reactivity to angry and fearful faces as well as methylation of the serotonin transporter gene isolated from blood in 96 adolescents between 11 and 15 years old. The analyses revealed an even stronger link between methylation and amygdala reactivity.

"Now over 10 percent of the differences in amygdala function mapped onto these small differences in methylation," Hariri said. The DNS study had found just under 7 percent.

Taking the study one step further, the group also analyzed patterns of methylation in the brains of dead people in collaboration with Etienne Sibille at the University of Pittsburgh, now at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto.

Once again, they saw that methylation of a single spot in the serotonin transporter gene was associated with lower levels of serotonin transporter expression in the amygdala.

"That’s when we thought, ‘Alright, this is pretty awesome,’" Hariri said.

Hariri said the work reveals a compelling mechanistic link: Higher methylation is generally associated with less reading of the gene, and that’s what they saw. He said methylation dampens expression of the gene, which then affects amygdala reactivity, presumably by altering serotonin signaling.

The researchers would now like to see how methylation of this specific bit of DNA affects the brain. In particular, this region of the gene might serve as a landing place for cellular machinery that binds to the DNA and reads it, Nikolova said.

The group also plans to look at methylation patterns of other genes in the serotonin system that may contribute to the brain’s response to threatening stimuli.

The fact that serotonin transporter methylation patterns were similar in saliva, blood and brain also suggests that these patterns may be passed down through generations rather than acquired by individuals based on their own experiences.

Hariri said he hopes that other researchers looking for biomarkers of mental illness will begin to consider methylation above and beyond DNA sequence-based variation and across different tissues.

(Source: eurekalert.org)

Johns Hopkins researchers say they have discovered a chemical alteration in a single human gene linked to stress reactions that, if confirmed in larger studies, could give doctors a simple blood test to reliably predict a person’s risk of attempting suicide.

The discovery, described online in The American Journal of Psychiatry, suggests that changes in a gene involved in the function of the brain’s response to stress hormones plays a significant role in turning what might otherwise be an unremarkable reaction to the strain of everyday life into suicidal thoughts and behaviors.

“Suicide is a major preventable public health problem, but we have been stymied in our prevention efforts because we have no consistent way to predict those who are at increased risk of killing themselves,” says study leader Zachary Kaminsky, Ph.D., an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “With a test like ours, we may be able to stem suicide rates by identifying those people and intervening early enough to head off a catastrophe.”

For his series of experiments, Kaminsky and his colleagues focused on a genetic mutation in a gene known as SKA2. By looking at brain samples from mentally ill and healthy people, the researchers found that in samples from people who had died by suicide, levels of SKA2 were significantly reduced.

Within this common mutation, they then found in some subjects an epigenetic modification that altered the way the SKA2 gene functioned without changing the gene’s underlying DNA sequence. The modification added chemicals called methyl groups to the gene. Higher levels of methylation were then found in the same study subjects who had killed themselves. The higher levels of methylation among suicide decedents were then replicated in two independent brain cohorts.

In another part of the study, the researchers tested three different sets of blood samples, the largest one involving 325 participants in the Johns Hopkins Center for Prevention Research Study found similar methylation increases at SKA2 in individuals with suicidal thoughts or attempts. They then designed a model analysis that predicted which of the participants were experiencing suicidal thoughts or had attempted suicide with 80 percent certainty. Those with more severe risk of suicide were predicted with 90 percent accuracy. In the youngest data set, they were able to identify with 96 percent accuracy whether or not a participant had attempted suicide, based on blood test results.

The SKA2 gene is expressed in the prefrontal cortex of the brain, which is involved in inhibiting negative thoughts and controlling impulsive behavior. SKA2 is specifically responsible for chaperoning stress hormone receptors into cells’ nuclei so they can do their job. If there isn’t enough SKA2, or it is altered in some way, the stress hormone receptor is unable to suppress the release of cortisol throughout the brain. Previous research has shown that such cortisol release is abnormal in people who attempt or die by suicide.

Kaminsky says a test based on these findings might best be used to predict future suicide attempts in those who are ill, to restrict lethal means or methods among those a risk, or to make decisions regarding the intensity of intervention approaches.

He says that it might make sense for use in the military to test whether members have the gene mutation that makes them more vulnerable. Those at risk could be more closely monitored when they returned home after deployment. A test could also be useful in a psychiatric emergency room, he says, as part of a suicide risk assessment when doctors try to assess level of suicide risk.

The test could be used in all sorts of safety assessment decisions like the need for hospitalization and closeness of monitoring. Kaminsky says another possible use that needs more study could be to inform treatment decisions, such as whether or not to give certain medications that have been linked with suicidal thoughts.

“We have found a gene that we think could be really important for consistently identifying a range of behaviors from suicidal thoughts to attempts to completions,” Kaminsky says. “We need to study this in a larger sample but we believe that we might be able to monitor the blood to identify those at risk of suicide.”

(Source: hopkinsmedicine.org)